I think Twitter has taken over most of the times when I once would've written a quickie blog post. But now that Twitter has turned unstable and lost its Jabber support, I'm losing interest. (Note to self: if I ever start a futuristic service company that's interesting amongst a core group but not really growing, make sure the service becomes crappy before a while to get people antsy and eager for it to get good again. See: New Coke.

I'm experimenting with a new approach that I'm not sure is working. I know I certainly am enjoying it, but I may be creating rifts with as many people as I'm forging alliances with. Can a person just ignore the hundreds of other people who have had chances to learn and grow but have proven incapable or unwilling to do either? Can you take that list of people who waste your time with inane and clueless behaviors and simply ignore every single thing they say or do?

And can you somehow avoid getting fired in the process?

On an unrelated topic, I finally got a beta invite to Yahoo!'s Fire Eagle. Though I'm hearing a lot of zeitgeist chatter about Y! starting to rot away, they're still a juggernaut and this particular product seems kind of interesting. After trying so many different location-based social and business services, it's nice to find something that can glue them all together. It does not, however, address the fact that pretty much every single one is terrible.

I tried LightPole. I tried Plazes. (Which autolocated me at a random IBM facility in Dusseldorf.) I tried Navizon for the Blackberry. I tried BrightKite. Dopplr. Ping.fm, hellotxt, blah blah yawn yawn. Really, how horrifically difficult could it be for one application to properly and continuously track my location and feed this data back. And then how horrifically difficult could it be for many applications to piggyback on that info and use it to accomplish something meaningful.

Horrible user interfaces. Horrible. Awful, useless out of date data. Huge amounts of "proximity" based clutter that is many weeks out of date, and impossible to remove from my view.

I have half a mind to venture off on my own and try to create something of my own that actually pulls it off. Fire Eagle is fine as the glue, but the tasty nugget at the center is entirely absent- or so rigidly confined to specific devices as to be impossible to appeal broadly. Even if the iPhone pulls it off, I still can't imagine everyone wandering around with iPhones. Meh.

Oh, also, I played around a bit with Adobe AIR. It's the coolest way I've ever seen to make Windows-caliber ugly apps run out of the box on OS X. (Yes, that's sarcasm, asshole. >:O)

On the bright side, some technologies are doing things properly.

Except for when Dropbox causes my desktop mac to crash catastrophically, I love it.

Firefox 3 is nice, but optimized OS X builds are even better. Now that I found Firebug 1.2, I'm actually starting to phase out of Safari as my primary browser. (For reals this time.)

I shall categorize this day under "Meh!"

Had a rather bizarre dream last night that I was one of the presenters at a Hollywood awards ceremony. I had to speak in front of everyone and felt entirely out of my element. After delivering my speech and receiving a mixed response (see: Britney's performance at the MTV VMAs) I ended up chatting with the guy who plays Chief Tyrol on BSG. (Argh, yes, I watched it before going to bed.)

My dreams seem to become more transparent the older I get.

I've been rereading a bunch of Kathy Sierra's old posts. It's all great stuff and I've been looking for something to repair my motivation and sense of purpose. This kind of stuff is just what the doctor ordered.

Traveling. Haven't done that in a while. Almost haven't even thought of things back home, and thinking less of them all every day I'm here.

Saw Pink Martini perform on Sunday night. It was the most amazing live performance I've ever experienced. I spent half the evening with goosebumps and not only shouted uncharacteristic "woos!" of exuberance between songs, but shouted them right next to old ladies! Fantastic!

I'm trying to think of what else but my brain is drifting out of linear mode and I love it so I shan't try to buck too much. Winery tour today. Bought a few bottles including the tastiest Beaujolais I've ever had and a really nice Gewurztraminer as well. Drove through College Station and near Texas A&M. I'm sure a person or two who reads this studied attended there. Woo and all that y'all.

Hmmm. Karaoke in a gay bar with a racist emcee. (omg I said it! but it's true, I was embarrassed!) Food, food, tasty food. Sleep. It's a good thing.

A few other events to come. Maybe I'll actually karaoke a bit myself. (I plan to stick with Dos Equis to limit my rate of intake, potentially thwarting this plan.) Another concert in a few days which will have a hard time following Pink Martini, but should be an altogether different type of crowd and venue.

And though I'm doing my best not to think about home, hey to everyone holding down the fort. ;)

Blech, Tuesday?